Before the mute condemnation of that self-accusing thought the bitterness which had been in his mind against her dissipated. Whatever ills she had done to him, he had done greater to her. Whatever ills she had done to humanity were the outcome not of her own nature, but of the circumstances and conditions which had governed her from the moment she was born. All that she had said during the last evening he spent at her house recurred to him and a new significance dawned into the words.
She had spoken of herself, pleaded for herself, striven to rouse his sympathy and compassion, so that, within the sombre barrenness of her ill-starred life, one spot there might be where the loving kindness of human charity had fallen and made it bright. He remembered how he had answered her—coldly, sternly, crushing down her awakening soul with the same callous indifference which had always met her. With the pitiless weight of a loveless life, what wonder she was warped, distorted, marred? More sinned against than sinning, he had no right nor will to blame her—only the love she had inspired in him remained, to fill his heart with sadness and drag it down with the hopeless desolation of vain regrets.
For she had gone from him even as she revealed the love she bore him, gone into the darkness by his own act, gone—his throat grew hard until he choked as the thought came to him—gone from a greater degradation he, by the merciless irony of fate, would have had to fasten upon her.
Better, a thousand times better for her, that she should be as she was than that she should have lived to face the doom awaiting her—better for her—and better for him.
It was nothing to him now that the story she had told showed her, by all the laws of humanity, to be unworthy. Black as she had painted herself, the love she had inspired shone through the blackness, revealing only that which lay beyond, the radiant purpose, unmeasurable by human standards, transcending human ken.
He knelt again by her side, taking her cold hands in his and placing them upon her breast, closing the staring eyes, composing the wry-drooped mouth, straightening the twisted limbs.
"Oh, my love, my love," he wailed. "Sleep on in peace. Sleep on till I shall come to you. Wait for me, for I must stay awhile yet to shield and shelter you so that none may know the secret of your life."